Born in a small conservative town in the Bible Belt of the Deep South,
artist Jason Cooper was raised on a steady diet of
KISS, movie monsters, punk rock, skateboarding and heavy metal. It’s no surprise then that this unusual paradox led his artistic endeavors into the unorthodox world of blotter acid art, rock posters, tattoo art and other underground forms of self-expression.
Combining his
lowbrow style and often dark humor with his interests in religious iconography and erotica, Jason forges his own path in a world of safe and stagnate art to create emotionally challenging works which invoke the visual senses to examine the always present — and sometimes uncomfortable — under layer of motive and meaning.
Jason's screen printed posters can be found around the world, in galleries from San Francisco to Manchester, and on display at
Hard Rock Cafe restuarants everywhere. He also participates regularly in solo and group exhibitions, which have included
Grasping at Straws (2001),
The Meat Annex (2002),
Artifacts of the Improbable (2002),
Mundo Gigantico del Rock (2003),
Complimentary Headache (2004), and
Graphic Noise (2005), and has been an active participant in the
Flatstock sh
A female cooper’s hawk, nicknamed “Cooper,” is currently occupying the Library of Congress’ ceiling lantern inside the main reading room. Visitors and researches can still access the library. The video embedded above shows a CNN news reporter checking out Cooper’s roost.
Library of Congress director of communications Matt Raymond blogged about the hawk: “It’s not ruffling our patrons’ feathers, and they aren’t bothering it either. To them, the whole situation is like water off a duck’s back.”
A professional from the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia has will attempt a humane capture. The library has installed a mesh net so the hawk stays out of the human-occupied areas of the main reading room. (Via the Huffington Post)
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Helen Cooper edited and abridged the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory, which is arguably the definitive English version of the stories of King Arthur. Completed in 1467-70, it charts the tragic disintegration of the fellowship of the Round Table, destroyed from within by warring factions. It also recounts the life of King Arthur, the knightly exploits of Sir Lancelot du Lake, Sir Tristram, Sir Gawain, and the quest for the Holy Grail. In the original blog post below, Helen Cooper states the case for King Arthur being the most successful commercial brand in English Literature (even more so than Shakespeare) and explains what Malory did that was so remarkable.
King Arthur has some claim to be the most successful commercial brand in the history of English literature, ahead even of Shakespeare. He has certainly been famous for much longer: his reputation has been growing for some fifteen centuries, against Shakespeare’s mere four. The historical Arthur, if he ever existed, was most likely to have been the leader of a war-band trying to hold at bay the invading Saxons in the wake of the withdrawal of the Roman armies, perhaps early in the sixth century. His fame was preserved in oral traditions for the next few hundred years, and only occasionally reached the written record; but after a Norman-Welsh cleric, Geoffrey of Monmouth, invented a full biography for him in the 1130s, stories about him have spawned and expanded, until by now we have a deluge of retellings, historical or unashamed fantasy, for adults and children; films, television series, and wargames; parodies at all levels, not least from the Monty Python team; a tourist industry, and consumer items from toy swords to T-shirts. There is even a fast-food shop in Tintagel named Excaliburgers.
Geoffrey wrote in Latin, and the story he invented remains just about plausible in historical terms: his Arthur is a great conqueror who unites Britain under his rule, overruns much of Europe and reaches the very gates of Rome. The first overtly fictional accounts of his court, not least the knights of the Round Table, were written in French. Magic begins to creep into these new stories, and so does love: there is no Lancelot in the historical tradition. For a long time, Arthurian material in English kept largely to the quasi-historical account as outlined by Geoffrey, and anyone who wanted a detailed acquaintance with the romance elaborations of the story still had to read them in French. It was not until the late fifteenth century that a Warwickshire knight, Sir Thomas Malory, distilled the full story of the Round Table into a single English version. The result, the Morte Darthur, is one of the great works of English literature, and it underlies, directly or indirectly, almost every version of the legend produced in the anglophone world since then. Greg Doran’s 2010 production of the Morte with the Royal Shakespeare Company is the latest of these, and its script, by Mike Poulton, is impressively (and exceptionally) faithful to its original.
The qualities that make Malory so remarkable are the same ones that have made most of his literary descendants want to change him. For him, actions speak not only more loudly than words but often instead of them. Causes are often missing and motives have to be deduced, in a way that sets the imagination buzzing. Morality is carried by a few adjectives: noble, worshipful, faithful, against recreant or cowardly. The love of Lancelot and Guinevere is good because it is faithful: ‘she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end’, as Malory puts it in one of his rare authorial interventions, cutting through all the questions about
I just this minute finished the revision on the middle grade loon story!
I'm going to regret staying up so late to finish it, but when you get within two chapters of The End, can you stop?
I can't!
Starting tomorrow . . . the read through.
I print it out, curl up and read it beginning to end. I'll have to dig out my colored pens . . . so I can color code my comments . . . and get ready for revision #3.
I love the way this is shaping up!
I read Chapter One to B tonight. When I was done, he asked for more!
More!!
How cool is that?
A recent discussion at Charlotte's Library about her favourite fictional room was a joy to me as this is probably my favourite fictional room too. You can click through to read the description which enthralled me around age 11. I was a small child like the main character in The little white horse which I think helped me identify with the bedroom being perfect (I think there was another bit where the door was the perfect height for Maria, which at the time seemed wonderful but I think I would have been loathe to give it up once I grew taller).
Other people's favourite fictional rooms are being discussed at Jen Robinson's blog. There are real gems, like Anne's room at Green Gables and Sara Crewe's spruced up attic room. Another room I remember loving was Westerly's from Susan Cooper's Seaward. I can't describe it clearly(my copy of Seaward is approximately 17,000km away) but the idea was that the two main characters found a tower where their perfect rooms awaited them. I'm pretty sure there was a trapdoor and telescope involved in West's room. In any case I also remember spending hours dreaming up my own perfect room after reading the book.
And two and half years on from my last discussion on the topic, the movie trailer of The little white horse, or The secret of Moonacre as it has been renamed*, is available. You can watch the trailer here (go to the third page of thumbnails to see it). I'm afraid it didn't do much for me in evoking the feeling of the book, so perhaps it's going to be one of those situations where it's better to treat it as a completely different piece of art rather than an adaptation of a beloved book.
EDITED to add: the director is the same as The bridge to Terabitha, which had a terrible trailer but was a wonderful adaptation. So perhaps this trailer is also misleading!
*although generally renaming annoys me I have a little bit of sympathy for this change. I think the title was one of the things that put me off reading The little white horse for so long as a child, combined with the pink cover it screamed "girly!"
